How the bicycle set women free

Male undergraduates at Cambridge University protest against the full admission of female students by hanging an effigy of a ‘New Woman’ on a bicycle from a window in Market Square, circa 1897 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

What it the most important invention in the fight for women’s rights? The pill? The Rampant Rabbit? The TaTa Towel? How about the humble bicycle?

The role of the bicycle in the emancipation of women is often overlooked, but it allowed women a freedom they had never experienced before.

And not only the freedom to travel, but the bicycle liberated women’s bodies from the tit-crushing corset and billowing skirts.

The bicycle changed attitudes to health, fitness and exercise and proved women were not, to quote Dr William Fowle in 1826, “feeble and helpless.” American suffragette Susan B Anthony claimed that the bicycle had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

The early years

The Victorians did not invent the bicycle, but they did refine the design so it could be used without rupturing internal organs.

One of the earliest designs for a two wheeled apparatus dates to 1534 and is attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti (a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci), but the first usable bicycle was designed by German Baron Karl von Drais in 1817, and was called a “running machine.”

There were no pedals, brakes or suspension, but the device allowed the rider to propel themselves forward in a half run, half cycle motion.

Soon, British designer Denis Johnson brought out an improved, more streamlined version called the “pedestrian curricle” or the “velocipede”, but it would take another fifty years for the bicycle to become really popular.

Four-wheelers, pushbikes, Penny Farthings and the 1860 “Boneshaker” were all important points in the evolution of the modern bicycle, but they were dangerous. Falling at speed from the height of a penny farthing caused horrible injuries and several fatalities.

The open spokes and precariously placed saddle meant that ladies couldn’t ride them in skirts and bustles without their petticoats getting tangled up and their bloomers torn off. As a result, bicycles were associated with thrill-seeking young men who cruised Victorian cobbles on a pimped out Penny-Farthing.

The golden age

1889 ladies’ safety bicycle

Thankfully, the 1880s saw the invention of the “safety bicycle,” which featured steering, brakes, pedals, suspension and eventually, pneumatic tyres; finally, the bicycle could be used by anyone.

Historians often refer to the 1890s as “the golden age of the bicycle,” and with good reason. The bicycle was suddenly the must-have item. As exciting as the bicycle was, it was regarded with suspicion from the get-go as doctors worried about the physical effects of ladies bouncing about on a saddle.

Men were regarded as robust and physically able withstand the potentially stimulating dangers of the bike. As the South Wales Echo reported in 1897, “the cycle was invented by the male creature and is still a male creature’s vehicle”; women, it reported, “should beware of the dangers of cycling.”

The prospect of a saddle between a lady’s legs rubbing up against her velodrome was almost too much for some to bear and the cycle was linked to sexual immorality. On 1896 newspaper warned that…

“These loose women are pedalling along the path of destruction […] Doctors warned that the unusual physical exertion, combined with the perilous lack of corsetry, would damage the feminine organs of matrimonial necessity and shake them loose.”

The ranks of reckless girls

In 1896, Miss Charlotte Smith, president of the American Rescue League, claimed that “bicycling by young women has helped swell the ranks of reckless girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women of the United States more than any other medium.” She went as far as to call the bicycle “the Devil’s advance agent.”

An article in the Iowa State Register warned that cycling “may suppress or render irregular and fearfully painful the menses, and perhaps sow the seeds for future ill health.”

In order to try to maintain modesty, some companies issued ‘hygiene saddles’ with holes in (to try and relieve ‘harmful pressure.’)

Some bikes came equipped with screens to conceal a lady’s ankles. But, it wasn’t just the indelicate fact that a saddle must be sat upon that was cause for concern.

Doctors started to warn cyclists about a devastating condition called ‘bicycle face.’ This terrible affliction effected men and women equally, but it was considered particularly upsetting for women.

In 1897, Dr A. Shadwell described the symptoms of bicycle face thus; “set faces, eyes fixed before them, and an expression either anxious, irritable, or at best stony…”

Long-running joke

In 1897, the editor of Harper’s Magazine suggested ladies chew gum when riding as “chewing gum keeps the face mobile and prevents the form of that expression of anxiety that doctors tell us may grow in time to be an essential part of a lady bicyclist’s features.”

Thankfully not all Victorians took this seriously and bicycle face became a long running joke.

Those women who were prepared to risk bicycle face, damaging their ‘matrimonial organs of necessity,’ and being turned on by a saddle had another obstacle to overcome. It very quickly became apparent that if women wanted to ride a bike, then their dress had to change.

The Victorian corset was not compatible with cycling. Victorian corsets restricted women’s waists to an ‘ideal’ circumference of 17-22 inches, which precluded anything more strenuous than embroidering doilies and fainting.

In an effort to prevent women freeboobing it on their bikes, corset companies tried to sell ‘Bicycle Corsets’ that allowed the wearer to “ride with grace”. They didn’t catch on.

Rational dress

Aberdeen Press and Journal 1888

Even more shocking than the discarding the corset, women started to view the miles of skirted crinoline, bustles and petticoats that they donned each day as a pain in the padded arse.

In 1881, the Society for Rational Dress was formed in London, opposing women’s restrictive clothing and cycling at the heart of it. Ladies’ cycling groups began to form across the country, all of whom pushed for ‘rational dress,’ and women started to wear knickerbockers and loose clothing to cycle.

This was considered by many to be an affront to decency, and the figure of ‘the new woman’ with her bicycle and bloomers became a figure of ridicule and scorn.

When Cambridge University proposed granting women full admission to university in 1897, male students protested by dangling an effigy of a woman on a bicycle out a window in market square.

At the heart of the hostility towards women cycling was a thinly veiled fear that traditional gender roles were being rejected. As women discarded demure dress, laughed at absurd medical quackery and embraced the independence the bike offered, they cycled out of the domestic and into the public world.

It was the First World War that really forced a change in attitude toward women’s dress, but the lady cyclists had paved the way in the preceding years. They risked ridicule and even violence to do so, but it was clearly worth it. As British writer Louise Jeye wrote in 1895,

“There is a new dawn … of emancipation, and it is brought about by the cycle. Free to wheel, free to spin out in the glorious country, unhampered by chaperones … the young girl of today can feel the real independence of herself and, while she is building up her better constitution, she is developing her better mind.”

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